Merry Christmas

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Welcome to the Dallas Drummond's Christmas blog

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A Wedding and a Birthday

February found the Dallas Drummonds in the Houston/Galveston area for (i) the wedding of Art and Rhonda's son, Randall, and (ii) Colleen's 40th Birthday. Here's the lovely couple:




Below are the Drummond sibs, in age order: Art, Leanne, Greg, Jeff, Shawn and Colleen:

And below are Shawn's youngest, Zane, dancing with Jeff's youngest, Mary:

Steamboat Springs

We'd gotten in the habit of skiing every other year, but we jumped ahead in 2007 when we had the opportunity to join some friends from Houston, the Juneks, in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.



The Junek's daughter brought a friend, Tori, who wanted a YouTube video of her first runs down black diamond slope; I was happy to oblige (<-- that's a link, click on it, and on any of the blue type, to see the video).

Mary, the hockey player

Living Stations of the Cross

One of the cool things that the kids at St. Patrick School do during Lent is a live-action representation of the Stations of the Cross. Both Gina (as an 8th grader) and Mary (as a kindergartener) got to participate as "women of Jerusalem."

Quo vidiis, Maria?

Transitions

2007 was a transition year, at least as far as schools go. Gina graduated from St Patrick, which she had attended for 10 years. And Mary graduated from kindergarten at St. Patrick.

Ellen, Gina and Mary at Gina's graduation

"Passing the candle" to the next year's 8th graders.

Mary graduates from kindergarten

Ursuline-bound: Gina, Katie and Alex graduating from St. Patrick and heading off
to Ursuline. Will Mary and Alex's sister Aiden follow in their steps in 8
years?

Heading to the Beach

As usual, we managed to make it to the beach this summer, both to the Gulf coast and the Atlantic. And we're fortunate to have friends with lakehouses, too.

Mary, Gina and Ellen in Galveston

Jeff and Ellen on Cedar Creek Lake

The bathing beauties on Long Island

I also managed to get a kayaking trip in with my friend Karl Rivas. We met near Lampasas, Texas to run the Colorado River about 15 miles above Lake Buchanan. Saturday and Sunday we ran a total of about 23 miles on the Guadalupe. Both rivers were running way above their usual flow rates; the Colorado was running high enough to take most of the rapids out of play, but not high enough to be dangerous. The Guadalupe was a blast, with most of the Class II rapids translating into Class IIIs.


Video? But of course! There's Gorman Falls on the Colorado, here and here.


The Guadalupe trip is here, here, here, here, here, and here.

First Day of School, fall 2007:

Here's Gina on her first day of high school, in her Ursuline Academy unform. Ursuline is the Catholic all-girls prep school in Dallas (and the oldest school in Dallas).

Ellen in her Oak Hill uniform.

And Mary in her St. Patrick uniform.

Telluride, Colorado:

2007 also saw our 20th wedding anniversary, which we celebrated with a trip to Telluride, Colorado. Early October is the very tail end of the Summer season and well before the beginning of the winter season, so the town was somewhat depopulated, but we didn't mind. The restaurants were still great, and there was still quite a bit of fall foilage showing across the mountains. We even got some snow. And, of course, video, here, here and here. The weather on the day we left was definitely the best.

Telluride is an old mining town tucked into a box canyon. Dogs are very popular. The airport (which you can see in the video) was a trip. I don't think Anne Marie would've agreed to fly into the Telluride airport if she had seen if first-hand. Fortunately, the weather was pretty good flying in and out, although it was pretty windy flying in.

Thanksgiving, 2007

We managed to convene all of the Drummonds in Dallas for Thanksgiving this year, and found a camera with a wide enough angle lens to get a picture of us all. All six children of Jim and Muriel Drummond, and all their offspring. It was a house-full, that's for sure. Of course, having them all around was useful for hanging Christmas lights over the remainder of the Thanksgiving weekend. . .

The Twelve Days of Christmas:

You may know that we live on a cul de sac called Timberhollow Circle. There are 14 houses on the street, and at Christmastime, the street is mildly famous in northeast Dallas for being decorated with a "Twelve Days of Christmas" theme. The first house says, "welcome," the last house says, "Merry Christmas," and the 12 in between go from the partridge in the pear tree to the 12 drummers drumming. While it might've made sense for us to have the 12th day house (drummers, Drummonds, get it?), we're actually the 3 french hens; that also makes some sense with the 3 little girls living there.

As you might expect, this means that we're responsible for a lot of decorating at Christmastime. That's when its useful to have a lot of brothers around to help hang the garland, lights, wreaths, and other decorations. There was an article on our street in the local newsmagazine (see page 50 of the magazine, page 26 of the pdf).

UPDATE: Here's a better picture, or at least a picture with our own three French hens:

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A Movable (Picture) Feast

If you've seen the original Dallas Drummonds Christmas blog, you know that there's usually an "annotated" version for those who want more. Anne Marie, who doesn't like Christmas letters to begin with, wants the blog to be little more than a series of pictures. I, on the other hand, want to include lots more stuff, specifically video. Why just throw up pictures, when you can post moving pictures?

Last Christmas, Anne Marie (on advice from her sister Roey) got me what I've decided is the best (and Anne Marie has decided is the worst) gift ever: a hard-drive digital camcorder. This thing records directly onto a computer harddrive in digital format, and came with all sorts of software for making movies. The best thing is that any section of video can just be cut out and discarded, so there's no downside to recording anything and everything. Sort of like a digital camera, where you shoot as many shots as you want and never have to worry about wasting film. And when the camera is full, you just download it to your computer (or burn the video onto DVDs for later assembly).

Armed with this new technology, I started shooting video of just about everything. Mainly, it's the usual stuff -- the kids sporting events, birthday parties, trips, that sort of thing. But instead of five minutes of a game, I'd record the whole damned thing. I could go back later, play director and pick and assemble my clips; add in special effects, sound, etc; and produce a movie. I made a music video of Gina's school basketball team. Then I made one for her club volleyball team. I'm working on one for her Ursuline volleyball team. And then . . . well, most of my work is on the Jeff Drummond channel on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/jeffdrummond.

But I'm not the only budding Francis Ford Coppola in the Drummond family: Gina staged, directed, shot, edited, and produced a video of The First Thanksgiving using her sister and cousins as "the talent." Gina's 1st Thanksgiving video is here:

The Kiddos:

What else can I tell you about the girls this year? Well, it is a house full of estrogen, and getting more estrogeny every year. It's not always easy being the only y-chromosome in the house, especially when there's a bug in the house that needs killin'. But little girls do love their daddy, and mine are no exception.

Mary: Mary graduated from kindergarten and entered 1st grade at St. Patrick School this year. But don't tell her she's in first grade; she thinks she's a freshman. Mary is, to say the least, precocious. Mary may end up being the most musical of the Drummond children. Or, it could just be that she watches too much Hannah Montana and thinks she wants to be a musician. She woke me up a few Saturdays ago, and told me that she had been up all morning writing songs. Uh huh. Anyway, here's her piano recital from last spring:

Mary also enjoys Indian Princess campouts (althought political correctness dictates that we don't call it that anymore). Like everything else, there's video, here, here, here, and here, and here and here.

Ellen: 2007 saw Ellen transition from 4th to 5th grade. She still at Oak Hill Academy, which seems to suit her needs pretty well. She has a lot of difficulties, but seems to find solace in concentrating on art. Despite her need for structure and a consistent schedule, she manages to deal with the crazy Drummond family schedule. This fall, she took a big step by going on a retreat with her Oak Hill classmates to Mo Ranch in the Texas Hill Country. She faces a lot of challenges, but she's working her way through them.

Here's a little shot of her before her first day of 5th grade:

Gina: Like I said above, Gina left St. Patrick for Ursuline Academy this year. She took her high school choice very seriously, since she had to choose between the local public school (Lake Highlands), the co-ed Catholic high school (Bishop Lynch), and Ursuline. Ultimately, even though I told her she could probably make her mother buy her a car if she went to the public school, she picked Ursuline, and has been very happy with the all-girl environment. The workload at Ursuline is killer, but she slugs through it. Here she is in her Ursuline uniform

She also tried our for and made the volleyball team. At St. Patrick, she could play volleyball in the fall, basketball in the winter, and softball in the spring, along with club volleyball. (Did I mention that I put a lot of videos together? Here's a music video I made for Gina's St. Patrick basketball team, and here's one I made for her volleyball team.) But at Ursuline, she had to pick one sport, and volleyball is it. Volleyball at Ursuline is very competitive, as the freshman team's undefeated regular season record proved. The team did lose one match at a freshman tournament and a couple at a JV tournament, but they won the other freshman tournament they played in, primarily playing against the big public schools.

Here's a picture of the Ursuline freshman team after winning the Garland tournament (Gina is #10):

And here's a video of the other freshman tournament (they lost the championship game to a public school team they had beaten during the regular season):